by Steve Goddard
The Atlantic Hurricane Basin remains dead quiet, and is now falling below the 1944-2005 average.
http://www.weatherstreet.com/hurricane/2010/Hurricane-Atlantic-2010.htm
I have not spent a lot of time studying hurricanes, but I have read that the “purpose” of hurricanes is to move heat quickly from the tropics to higher latitudes. Heat flow is always driven by differences in temperature. If two places were at the same temperature, there would be no heat flow.
Suppose that temperatures at higher latitudes (60N) were very warm – as they have been. What motivation would there be for hurricanes to form? The video and stil below shows UNISYS SST anomalies, with all anomalies between -1.0°C and +1.0°C removed.
Note that the Atlantic hurricane basin has very few places which are warmer than 1.0°C above normal. This agrees with Bob Tisdale’s graph.
By contrast, SST anomalies in the North Atlantic are far above normal. The difference in temperature between the tropical and north Atlantic is far below normal. Supposedly, it is that difference which gives hurricanes their raison d’être .
Things can change quickly. 1950 was the second most active hurricane season on record, and the first hurricane didn’t form until August 12.
Does it make sense that the heat engine which drives hurricane formation is basically shut down? What do you think?
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..and yet the MSM and other alarmists continue to spout the “more devastating hurricanes” nonsense.
I don’t think it is just driven by heat alone,
thermal gradient is like water pressure,
if you don’t turn on the tap, there is no flow,
if “they” knew what drives the flows,
they could forecast on the nose.
I am still processing data,
looking for the errata.
I believe it may be a quiet season.
another post with Goddard revelling in his ignorance.
You never know. This could be the “calm before the storm” or the monkey could be right.
[off topic ~ ctm]
One wonders if any of the warmists is preparing to apologize to Dr. William Gray any time soon…..
The lack of anomalies suggests the situation is normal. What is “normal?”
“Normal” is not zero hurricanes. And, of course, it only takes one to get everyone wonderfully excited.
My understanding is that it isn’t the contrast between the arctic and tropics that matters so much as the contrast between the mid-latitudes and tropics. “Normal” has the tropic seas at their warmest right now, and contrasting nicely with the cooler ocean up in the mid-latitudes.
Then, right about now, we sadly notice the sunsets are earlier, and the nights are getting longer. This is quite “normal,” but it means the sweltering land-masses start to cool, and rather than continents contributing to uplifting air, (which in some ways clashes with the uplifting air over the tropical seas,) the continents start to fuel areas of decending air, (which in some ways compliment the uplifting air over tropical seas.)
Land cools more swiftly than the sea. Therefore it is “normal” for continental air to decend in mid-latitudes, enhancing the tropical uplift to the south and south-east. And then, lo and behold, we see a sudden uptick in the number of hurricanes, starting in mid-August.
It’s all quite normal, unless, of course, one of these suckers comes whirling north and clobbers your neck of the woods.
Perhaps Richard Telford could explain, instead of just being rude.
At least when Ehrlich wrote The Population Bomb he was canny enough to put his predictions in the future; the warmists are saying that hurricanes should be up now, and the Atlantic’s not playing nice (and long may it be so!) Go figure…
The experts are all in general agreement. I pay attention to their prognostications. Even the amateurs mostly all agree, however there is a background sense that something is amiss. The idea of stripping out the difference in temperature is a very novel idea. I have never seen that before in many seasons of tracking hurricanes. It is a breath of fresh air and flies in the face of conventional wisdom that one picks up from the “would be pros” that hang around places like Weather Underground. Ever since early in the season Dr. Masters has been advocating the belief that SSTs were at extreme levels so therefore this would be a spectacular year for canes. This has been more recently reinforced by the pros and “would be pros” by citing the behaviour of the MJO and its forecast. Yet the weakness in activity remains evident and documented in Dr. Maue’s infamous chart.
There will probably be some hurricane activity eventually this year but the level appears to be much less that forecasts. Many of these pros have come to rely on the GCMs which are continuously run to generate future tracks of potential hurricanes. This happens daily. These are well documented in the bowels of Weather Underground blog and repeated over and over again. The GCMs continue to call for activity especially when they get out to around 240 hours in the future but very few can take these forecasts seriously. NHC doesn’t seem to, they tend to express their future conviction in terms of 48 hour forward looking at best.
My personal work has been focused on the CV wave generator and its general limitations. The speed at which the Trades carries wave events across Africa and then across the tropical Atlantic is quite limited to the basic 10 to 15 KTs which the trades blow at. The success rate of these wave in developing is another varible that has been identified in the 10% to 15% range. Given these constraints the remaining hurricane season will only produce a very much lowered level of named storms in spite of the drum beats of the pros. The African CV portion of the season is the bulk of hurricane activity in the Atlantic. As it goes, so does the season. Hence the dilemma. Due to the overall variability, those of us who really are concerned know to sit, watch and wait while be extra vigilent.
The heat transfer aspect of hurricanes although understood in concept has needed a little extra work. Thanks for your efforts, I’m am sure some of the pros are listening and taking notes.
Joe Bastardi predicted back in April that this season would be active and he mentioned the ‘physical drivers’ involved. A weak El Niño and warmer ocean temperatures in the ‘Atlantic tropical breeding grounds’.
Weak trade winds ‘which reduce the amount of dry air injected into the tropics from Africa,’ plus high humidity ‘which provide additional upward motion in the air and fuel tropical storm development.’
He obviously didn’t anticipate Nina developing so quickly, but how this influences the final mix is entirely up in the air.
If the the ocean temperatures at the tropics and high middle latitudes are not anomalous this year, that means the temperature differences between the tropics and the high middle latitudes must be at the average. According to hypothesis, the hurricanes are driven by the absolute temperature difference between the tropics and the high middle latitudes — which is at normal values because there are no anomalous ocean temperatures — so there should be a normal number of hurricanes. Thus this hypothesis does not explain the lack of hurricanes so far. If you actually watch what has been going on on the satellite photos at the national hurricane center’s website, you would see that so far all the start-up tropical storms are having their “tops” blown off them by strong high level winds — they call it “shear” — and they are also traveling “too fast” over the ocean to intensify. You’d probably be better off hypothesizing that the lack of hurricanes is connected to the odd jet-stream pattern that is causing the Russian heat wave. If this hypothesis is true, you would expect hurricanes to start forming more or less when the heat wave breaks because the jet-stream has returned to normal.
Welcome to the science of climatology.
When in Rome do as the Romans do.
I am a meteorologist, and I am noticing that a lot of upper level wind shear is tearing apart the storms. This is clearly not driven by AGW, but is interesting to note. The so called “record breaking SSTs” that Dr. Jeff Masters of Wunderground was hyping about, claiming that it was due to AGW,
http://www.wunderground.com/blog/JeffMasters/comment.html?entrynum=1480
and even has an appalling poll to the right hand side. Apparently, the so called “record breaking SSTs” are falling, and OOPC confirms this, as the La Nina gets stronger.
http://ioc-goos-oopc.org/state_of_the_ocean/sur/pac/nino3.4.php
http://ioc-goos-oopc.org/state_of_the_ocean/sur/atl/tna.php
By the last link, it shows that Atlantic SSTs are now .5-1 Degree Celcius above normal, and falling. How pathetic. The so called claims for the hyperactve hurricane season of 2010 are falling apart, day by day. This is looking more and more like 2006, over and over again.
To those who would like to learn about hurricanes I would recommend reading “Tropical Weather and Hurricanes”. Fundamentals of Physical Geography – Dr. Michael Pidwirny, University of British Columbia Okanagan, http://www.physicalgeography.net/fundamentals/7u.html
Also, “Hurricane Basics” (NOAA National Hurricane Center), http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/HAW2/english/basics.shtml
These are links from the Hurricanes section of my page “Meteorology for South Florida and the Caribbean”, http://www.oarval.org/meteorologFL.htm
Historically, the Atlantic Hurricane Season peaks between mid-August and end-October. The middle of the season is near September 10.
These natural heat engines cool the tropics into the Hadley cells, as needed.
I think Dr. William Gray and Dr. Phil Klotzbach, from Colorado State University know a lot about hurricanes and I feature their forecast work prominently. But pay attention to Ryan N. Maue’s “2010 Global Tropical Cyclone Activity Update”, http://www.coaps.fsu.edu/~maue/tropical/
Steven, you said: Does it make sense that the heat engine which drives hurricane formation is basically shut down? What do you think?
Note it is a heat engine not a temperature engine. Although you use the terms as synonyms in your article this is incorrect. A volume of dry air has much lower heat content -enthalpy- than the same volume of humid air; up to ~80 times less. It is this that gives the wet adiabatic lapse rate that leads to the instability, and thus to the convective weather that eventually forms storms and then hurricanes.
Perhaps the air in the mid-latitudes is just slightly drier than normal as the jet stream has moved more equatorwards in the last few years and that is enough to reduce the instability so that strong storms are not viable once they move out of the tropics?
It would be very useful if people stopped confusing temperature and heat content and instead were more disciplined about the terms.
All the temperature graphs are very interesting but they are really meaningless in terms of the Earth’s energy budget as there is the implicit but incorrect assumption that temperature equals heat content. Perhaps someone should create a ‘heat content’ anomaly map using humidity and temperature to obtain the heat content?
I have not seen a ‘heat’ mapping or a ‘heat graph’ in any of the articles on global warming, yet it is heat energy that should be being measured.
Hurricanes “form” when the tropical waves (depression trough generating pulses that travel from east to west) provide energy to humid (unstable) air. This occurs year-round but the seasonal affect of the sun sends the area of maximum heat energy from the equator into the area of north latitude 10 to 20 degrees. In this area (ITCZ or inter tropical convergence zone) the rising unstable air not only forms thunderclouds and rain, it is subjected to the coriolis force provided by the earth’s rotation.
It is that rotation that creates the cyclonic (rotating) pattern that starts the hurricane “engine”. If the upper levels (in the atmosphere) have the correct advection patterns to remove the rising air, a circuit is set up and a warm-core develops within the storm system. This system feeds on the heat energy in the moist warm air and can grow in wind strength and size. Its winds also push the sea water and create a surge that creates flooding when the system approaches land.
At present, all signs point to ideal conditions for tropical cyclone formation. The heart of the “season” is August 15 to October 15 and unless there is a major change to the current conditions, we can expect a lot of activity in a very short period.
All of the atmospheric and oceanic parameters are pointing to a heaping helping of hurricanes. Better batten down the hatches, boys.
richard telford,
My ignorance is borne out by the rash of hurricanes this season.
Sadly even if only one Hurricane appears very late on you can be sure that all the Warmists and Media will trot out the tired old “Global Warming” proof ad nauseam.
What is it with these sad sack ‘believers’ ? Act on Facts not faiths, folks!
I question the use of anomalies in this case. IF hurricanes are related to temperature differences it would be the differences in actual temperatures not anomalies. If the higher latitude northern Atlantic SST has a +1.5 to 2.5 anomaly it is still many degrees cooler than actual temperatures of the the lower latitude northern Atlantic and the temperature difference still exists.
Funny thing is that a lot of us that are long-term residents/natives of Florida collectively shrugged off the hurricane season warning because it just didn’t “feel” right.
I read the following years ago and assume that the story is true (in most details, anyway!).
Al Capp was famous for his strong views on various aspects of American life (and perhaps other subjects as well). Included were hippies and their like, and they reciprocated by making him a favorite target of heckling when he gave public talks. At one talk, a long-haired individual stood up and swore at great length at Capp, who stood silent, listening. When the heckler finally stopped, Capp said “Now that the individual has identified himself, what does he have to say?” The crowd applauded and Capp gained their support.
Similarly with outbursts here of the type “another post with Goddard revelling in his ignorance”. Such posters are cordially invited to state why and to what they object so strenuously.
IanM
This isn’t an AGW/anti-AGW argument. Many of the hurricane forecasters are skeptics.
I am just throwing out an alternative explanation for what we are (not) seeing so far.
It is also important to note that there are different ways of looking at a problem. I am suggesting a macro-physical view, in contrast to the micro-physical approach which people are used to hearing about.
Tom in Florida
The point is that the difference in temperature is lower than normal.